


growing pains

by tobylove (orphan_account)



Series: strength in sevens [5]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Coming Out, Coming of Age, Drinking, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Divorce, Sex, and rich is just an awkward dad, and they’re all boring and domestic, ed just doesn’t want to end up like sonia, jk, maybe? - Freeform, probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:35:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24792475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/tobylove
Summary: Eddie got divorced so he wouldn’t have to deal with an idiot’s shit anymore.Not so he could get involved with a different one.AKA, my Dream Daddy AU.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: strength in sevens [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626412
Kudos: 2





	growing pains

**Author's Note:**

> um..... hello y’all!! 
> 
> crazy how i haven’t been on here for months (bc i was busy and just needed a little break) but then all this stuff started happening in the world and my mind instantly went “Escapism Babey!!!!”
> 
> this is a verse my sis and i play around w all the time! i’ve written fics in the past abt the losers being parents in the bg but now i’m finally working on one where they’re parents in the foreground. anyways sorry for the rambling. hope you guys all enjoy!! :0)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohhhh boi..... toby is back on their bullshit.....

He would do _anything_ for his little girl.

He will never admit this—for it would get him in trouble with Myra—but that’s the main reason why he laid back and let Myra divorce him. They weren’t working out. And it wasn’t good for their daughter.

He thinks she’s beautiful (but she is _his_ daughter, after all; he _is_ a little biased): Amanda Kaspbrak, his little girl with the quick smile and hair like waves that people always say looks just like him. He calls her Ankh sometimes, after her initials—because she’s the entire essence and vitality that makes his life worthwhile. Makes it feel like it’s special. Or sometimes, he calls her _ANKR_ , because in his life she is the anchor that he holds onto whenever he feels like the tide will sweep him away.

“Stop that, Daddy,” she tells him (and even when she grimaces, she looks like him). “It’s embarrassing.”

Embarrassing, yes—but he is her father, and he takes pride in that, and fathers are _supposed_ to embarrass their children. And they’re also supposed to do whatever it takes to provide for them and keep them safe. But sometimes, kids don’t understand that.

Which is why, whenever he told her the news, she had yelled at him and slammed the door in his face.

“Mandy, _c’mon_ ,” he whined on the other side. “Open the door.”

_“No!”_ was her muffled response. _“I’m not going anywhere!”_

He sighed. “Can we at least talk about this? Open the door. We’ll talk. I’ll hear your side, you can hear mine. C’mon. _Please?_ ”

There were a few heavy seconds of silence where he didn’t think she was going to dignify him with a response. He remembers reaching for her doorknob, but then stopped when he started thinking

(Amanda by God if you don’t open this goddamned door I will blow it off these motherfucking hinges open the _fucking_ door _NOW LISTEN TO YOUR FATHER_ )

like his mother—and he remembers— _vividly_ —that he had drew his hand away, fast, as if the door had burned him.

And he remembers the door cracking open, just a bit, letting the light out and only showing a little sliver of her face from the other side. “Fine,” she had said. “We can talk. But I won’t be happy.”

They had sat on the edge on her bed, two twins side-by-side—and her room, even now, gives him a sense of sadness at the passing of time; her room that still looks like a little princess’s, with yellows and pinks. She had looked at him, and her hair had formed a billowing sheet around her, like Rapunzel’s, and she had looked miserable.

“Let’s hear your side first,” he offered, and smiled at her.

“Okay,” she said, mildly enough. “I don’t _wanna_ move, Dad. It’s lame and sad and sucks major fucking ass—”

(she had looked at him, and he gave her the hard stare that told her to **Watch It,** and she surrendered with a crooked smile)

“—I mean, _really bad_...” Her smile faded. “And I don’t wanna leave all my friends. I don’t want new friends. I don’t want a new room.” She dropped her voice an octave. “I mean, I’m glad that you finally don’t have to deal with Mom, but... I just kinda wish that things could be how they used to be.”

“I know, Princess. I’m sorry. I really am.” He had grabbed both of her hands. “Do you wanna hear my side?” 

She nodded her head.

“I can’t stay here, Amanda,” he told her, and he had nothing to offer her now but a sad + genuine smile. “I just can’t. Your mother’s kicking me out. And that’s _fine_. Y’know? I already got a place... it’s got two bedrooms, if you ever wanna stay... but it _is_ unfair of me to expect you to uproot your life like this. If you... if you want to stay here with your mother—”

_“No!”_ she cried—and suddenly her grip on his hands felt simultaneously like a vice-grip and not even there. “I don’t wanna stay with her. _Please_ don’t make me stay with her. I wanna go wherever you go. I... I’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Are you _sure_ —”

But she had threw her arms around his neck and now her grip _did_ feel there—it was squeezing him, squeezing the _life force_ out of him, but yet he was grateful for it all the same. He felt warm tears trickling down the sides of his neck. Which scared him a little. Amanda was the goofball, she was the class clown, she made everybody laugh and hang onto her words; she never cried. She was a _young lady._

“I love you, Daddy,” she told him. 

He hugged her back. Because despite being all those things... at the end of the day, she was still his daughter.

“I love you too, Mandy Bear,” he told her back.

* * *

“You don’t seem like you’re too upset about it now,” he teases her, watching her walk up and down the porch and the sidewalk and the lawn. In her excitement she hadn’t even unloaded a box. She stops midway in her tracks, gives him a half-hearted eye-roll and a smile.

“Pffft. Shut up, Eddie.”

(He gives her **The Look** again, and again she throws in the towel)

“This place is _awesome,_ Dad! You didn’t tell me it looked this nice.”

“That’s better.” He’s smiling. “And why would I? I didn’t wanna bribe you.”

“It wouldn’t have been _hard!_ ” she tells him. She’s smiling, too, and points a finger at him. Her eyes are slit and teasing. “But I see why you didn’t. You wanted this to be a bachelor pad. But that’s okay, it still will be, ‘cause I’ll have all the boys in school hanging out in here.”

He cuts own his eyes at her. “You better fucking _not._ ”

She throws up her arms. “Alright, Big Bad Italian Man. I _won’t_. Not _all_ of ‘em, anyway. But if I get a boyfriend, can _he_ come?”

He doesn’t even want to give her a response—because honestly, who is she, talking about _boyfriends?_ —but he grits his teeth and forces a smile. “Sure.”

“Thanks, Daddy!” she beams... and she runs up to him and plants a kiss on his cheek. “You’re the _best_. I’ll love you forever and ever.”

He blinks a little. It throws him off, all the time, how _different_ she is from him and Myra. How much of her own person she is. Which is fine—he’s all about that; he would never try to inhibit who she is, like his own mother had tried to inhibit him—but he wonders where her personality came from? He certainly doesn’t think of him nor Myra as particularly jokey or jovial people. But Amanda is the goofball, she is the class clown, she never cries, she makes everyone hang onto her words, she wants to be a journalist; she makes people laugh and keeps the laughs rolling.

He loves her. But sometimes, he doesn’t understand her. 

On her first day of school, he decides that he’s going to walk around the neighborhood and introduce himself to the neighbors—but Mike had already beaten him to the punch.

“I really think you’re gonna like everybody,” Mike is telling him. “We’re really chill here. Close-knit. You and your daughter will fit in just fine.”

Mike had showed up to their door with a basket of pastries and a pretty smile. And he had let him in agreeably enough. He is a handsome black man, a friendly neighbor, and his eyes dance with bright reflections when he talks.

“You think so?” He asks, a little nervous. “I’m not the nicest person in the world. Amanda is, though. But we’re _nothing_ alike.”

“I think you’re too being too hard on yourself, Eddie.” Mike sips some more of his tea (that he also brought) and peers over his glass at him with his own Fatherly Look: one that he instantly recognizes as **You Oughta Believe Me.**

“Maybe so,” he says mildly, realizes he’s blushing, and suddenly decides that his own cup of tea looks _very_ interesting.

“We’re all super nice here,” Mike reiterates. He’s smiling again. “Most of us on the block are parents, too, so we understand the plight. Y’know? As a matter of fact, my own daughter is the one who made this basket.”

“Mary, you said her name was?”

“Mmhmm. She and Amanda go to school together.”

“Hm. So she’s already got a built-in friend. And if they don’t work out, I’m coming to _you_ first.” He smiles a little. “Don’t tell Amanda I said this, Mike. She’ll get mad at me.”

Mike grins. “Oh I won’t, brother. We wouldn’t just have to answer to Mandy-girl. MJ’ll have my head on a platter.” And with this, they both laugh.

“So, how long have you and Mary lived here?” he suddenly asks. “Is it just you and her? Or do you have a...”

“Oh, no wife,” Mike answers easily, and laughs as he waves his hand. “No husband, either. Wink wink. I’ve _never_ been married, actually. It’s always been just MJ and I.”

“So how’d that work?” He’s smirking now. “A one-night stand, or?”

Mike giggles a little before he speaks... but then his smile fades. “Somebody, uh, somebody just put a baby on my doorstep one day—and I called all around to see if somebody were to come get her. The police couldn’t find any relatives for her. And I was only intending on fostering her for a little while, _honest_. But I got attached, I named her Mary Jane Hanlon, and that’s how it’s been ever since.”

“Aww, Mike. That’s sweet. Marty—uh, Myra, and I thought we were gonna have to adopt.”

“Myra’s your wife? No one-night stand for you, either?”

“Shit. May as well have been. We’re divorced.”

“Oh, _Eddie,_ ” Mike says with a frown. Genuine sadness. “I’m so _sorry_.”

“No! It’s fine. I like it better this way, _trust me._ Relationships are overrated. I don’t think I _ever_ wanna be in one again. Not until Mandy goes off to college, or something.”

Mike laughs. “ _Amen,_ brother.”

They both sit in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, sipping their tea, both taking time to glance at each other from the tops of their glasses.

“That’s the only downside to this neighborhood,” Mike begins again, with a wink. “Everybody’s married, pretty much. You’ve got the Denbroughs to the left, the Hanscoms to the right, and the Urises at the end of the culdesac. If Stan Uris wasn’t married, I’d snatch him up, best _believe_. A boy can dream, right. Anyway, all things considered, they’re all very lovely people. But _blech_. The only bachelors here are me and Richie. And you, now.”

“Who is this Richie?” he asks, intrigued. “Does _he_ have any kids?”

“He’s got a son, yeah. But unlike you and I—the smart ones—I hear he’s proactively looking for somebody. Isn’t he _crazy?_ ” Mike’s eyes flash with the gleam that only comes from teasing an old friend. “We’re all having a get-together on Saturday. You should come and meet everybody. They’ll love you.”

He instinctively wanted to say: _No, I can’t leave Amanda here all by herself..._ but then he quickly remembers that she’s fifteen; quickly gets hit with that familiar pang of sadness.

“Sure, Mikey. I’ll be there,” he tells him. And he means it. Those _were_ his exact intentions, after all: to meet their neighbors. Hopefully, some of them are just as inviting as Mike. Some of them even sound a little familiar. Well, the last names, anyway. And he thinks about the statement made that Mike had made regarding this Richie.

(“isn’t he _crazy?_ ”)

Shit, with everything that he’s been through in the past couple of years with Myra—finalizations, custody wars, splitting up assets—he doesn’t understand why _anybody_ whose not married at their age would _proactively_ _try_ to go out of their way to deal with anyone else’s shit.

It’s funny how things change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amanda: ain’t gonna be no bachelor pad for you, Eddie K!


End file.
